


Doesn't Matter If I Break

by peopleinherearewaiting



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s03e11 Here I Go Again, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 07:25:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16698007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peopleinherearewaiting/pseuds/peopleinherearewaiting
Summary: Based on the time loop episode. This is my attempt to address all of the emotions that the writers completely neglected around Zari's suicide attempts.





	Doesn't Matter If I Break

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Gravel to Tempo by Hayley Kiyoko.   
> I have never written for the LoT fandom before and I usually avoid dialogue like the plague so this might be a bit rough but I wanted to get it up because I didn't even expect to write it. I've literally been thinking about it since the episode in February and today it actually happened?? So anyway, have some angst.

Zari couldn’t count how many times she’d relived the same hour over and over again, and it didn’t feel like it would stop any time soon. She had already tried everything she could think of to stop the ship from exploding and it had drained her, both emotionally and physically, so when Nate suggested she give up trying to save everyone’s lives for a while and just enjoy doing things without having to deal with the consequences, she gave it a go. Now she knew more about her teammates than she wanted to, and she had mastered the violin.

But the ship kept exploding.

When the hour started over again, Zari went to find Nate since he had been easy to convince of her situation in previous loops. Apparently, there was a film that reflected her predicament fairly accurately so now when she went to find him all she had to say was ‘Groundhog day, ship explodes’ for him to understand.

“Wait, you’re caught in a time loop?” he replied. “That’s awesome!”

Zari definitely did not consider it to be ‘awesome’, and in fact, she was starting to feel pretty desperate. Looking over at him, she sighed. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m losing my mind.”

Nate looked concerned as he asked, “wait, did you do the-”

Zari interrupted him to finish his sentence. “The fun montage? Yeah, thanks for that, you’re a good friend.” The dark-haired woman turned away as she said, almost to herself, “nothing’s fun anymore.” She walked out of the library and over to the control panel where somebody had left a pistol that they’d used on the previous mission. 

Exhaling slightly, she grabbed it and turned it in her hand. She had tried everything to escape this time loop, and now she only had one option left. An option that she had tried to avoid, but had accepted long ago, perhaps before she ever became trapped in the loop. She had known pain and suffering her entire life; she had seen her whole family, her little brother, die in front of her. She may have escaped that life when the Legends picked her up, but she had never confronted the pain that she carried with her. Instead, it just built up into something unbearable. And now she had an excuse to stop that pain in the name of saving her friends.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hey! Take it easy,” Nate called to her as he caught up and saw what she was doing.

“It’s the only option I haven't tried, maybe it’ll stop the loop,” Zari replied as she flicked off the safety and held the pistol to her temple. She felt guilty that there would be people to witness her death, she didn’t want to cause them pain even if it was only temporary before the loop broke and their memories of this were erased.

A second later, the captain walked onto the bridge and started in surprise and horror at the scene unfolding before her.

“Hey!” she yelled, reaching towards Zari, “what the hell’s going on?”

Zari shrunk into herself, taking a step back from Sara as she tried to distance herself from the comfort she offered. Zari wanted to do this; she had made up her mind and she wasn’t going to let the captain change it.

“Don’t come closer!” Zari warned as she closed her eyes and screwed up her face in anticipation as she pulled the trigger.

And nothing happened.

“Typical,” Zari sobbed as she put the gun down and covered her face with her hands, deliberately not looking at Nate who was doubled over in relief, or at Sara who looked sad but somehow understanding.

Sara stepped closer, reaching out a hand in comfort as she said, “hey, it’s okay, let’s talk this one through.”

Zari turned away in shame of her failed rescue and her inability to control her emotions now that she’d started to let them out. “It doesn’t matter, you wouldn’t believe me,” she replied to Sara.

“Try me,” the captain replied, and Zari caught another glimpse of the softness that comes with understanding unbearable pain which was normally masked by the captain’s cool and sarcastic exterior.

So Zari takes a deep breath and starts to explain. “I keep reliving the same hour over and over again and no matter what I do the ship explodes, kills us all. And I’m totally alone in it because for some reason I’m the only one that’s even aware that it’s happening,” she draws a shaky breath, “and I try so hard but I can never save any of you.” She looks down at the floor to avoid meeting the captain’s eyes, fearing rejection and disbelief.

“Okay, I wanna help,” Sara replies immediately, looking at Zari evenly. 

Zari looks up at Sara in confusion as she asks, “wait, you believe me?”

“Yeah, how much time do we have left?” the captain replies.

 

\--------------

 

After consulting with the rest of the team, the Legends manage to find Gary and the bomb which leads to Zari shutting herself in the captain’s office with the bomb to try to save her teammates’ lives. Again. She watched the timer count down the last few minutes as the rest of the team tried to persuade her to stop what she was doing. Deciding that she should try to help her teammates in the last few minutes she had, she told them all what she had learnt during the many loops that she had lived through. It didn’t matter if she overstepped if she wouldn’t be around for them to get annoyed at. And she was never able to save her brother, so the least she could do was to help these people who had become almost a second family, if only in a very small way. So she told Mick to keep writing, and Amaya and Nate to give their relationship another go properly, without sneaking around, and she told Sara to ask Ava out. She ignored the Legends’ shouts and Sara’s orders to stand down as she slowly began to create her vortex.

“I love you guys,” she said quietly as the timer ticked down to zero.

And then she woke up. Death had taken her entire family so quickly, but Zari was still standing after two attempts to join them. That didn’t seem fair. But, as Gideon explained to her, she had been in a simulation of the AI’s own creation, so nothing she had done during the loops had been real. All of that pain as she had tried to end her life had been for nothing. And none of the Legends remembered anything.

Later on that day, she gave Sara a brief overview of what had happened when she was stuck in the loop, rushing through the parts where she tried to sacrifice herself for the team, and instead focussing on trying to persuade Sara to ask Ava out.

But Sara wasn’t going to let Zari distract her with talk of the Time Bureau agent. She sipped her coffee before asking, “so, to clarify, you tried to kill yourself twice to save us all?”

Zari shrugged and looked down into her mug. “I guess. It was the only option I had left.”

“You could’ve come to me; you can always come to me,” Sara said softly, watching Zari as she tried to figure out what the brunette was thinking. “Are you sure there wasn’t more to your decision?”

Zari replied immediately, “no-” before breaking off and sighing. “I can’t stop the pain,” she said quietly, not looking at Sara again. “I escaped and the rest of my family died and I can’t fix it and I don’t want to be without them anymore,” she confessed, feeling a tear slide down her cheek. “I don’t deserve to be here, and I don’t deserve you guys.”

Sara exhaled, wishing her friend didn’t have to go through this, especially since she knew all about grief and guilt and what it could do to a person. “Zari, you shouldn’t feel ashamed that you survived,” she started. “Losing people hurts, and you lost your whole family so of course, it’ll hurt. But you can’t let the pain consume you. You do deserve to be here, and we are all so grateful that you are. Now, I have to ask, do you think you might do anything to hurt yourself in the future?”

Zari sat silently for a moment in thought before replying. “I’m not sure,” she said, “I won’t be doing anything more than sleeping for the rest of today, but I don’t want to make promises for the future.”

Sara nodded, thankful for Zari’s honesty and openness, and thought about what to do next. “Okay, I want you to stay on the ship for the next few missions. You can coordinate and monitor us from the bridge. We’ll start locking weapons in the armoury or our rooms when not on missions, and if it’s okay with you, I’d like to ask Gideon to monitor your vitals so she can alert me if anything happens. But I will be having a serious talk with her about the situation that she put you into as well,” the captain finished.

Zari nodded, her eyes watering at the fact that someone cared enough to look out for her. “Could you not tell the rest of the team?” she asked. “I might tell some of them eventually but it’d be too much to cope with right now.”

“Of course,” Sara replied, “and my door is always open if you need to talk about anything.” She smiled sadly, “we’ve probably got a lot of stuff in common,” she said.

Zari nodded before finishing her coffee. “I’m gonna head back to my bunk and get some rest,” she said.

Once there, she collapsed in her bunk and it wasn’t long before she was asleep, the emotional exhaustion of the day getting the better of her.


End file.
